Facial expressions

This week I have some tips for expressions and emotions. Here we go!

There are main emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, excitement etc. that we think of first. Those emotions cause facial expressions which I decided to sketch strong ones. The moves on our faces like eyes opened wide or shut; eyebrows high, down or archy; corners of mouth up or down and all of those wrinkles near corners of lips, between and above eyebrows and on the cheek altogether express emotions.

This is a person back against the wall (idk if you can say the name of him) who seems like is about to cry, grieving; eyebrows are up and archy. He is looking up; the chin is up, appears bigger, so the eyes and forehead are shorter(I mentioned this topic previous week –head positions-, you can find).The second one’s head slightly tilted down and eyes look up; face has a furious and threatening expression, and in pain. Eyebrows are down that makes (vertical)wrinkles between eyebrows and some more (horizonal wrinkles) on the forehead.
Cheek’s line on both sides of mouth, like from the edges of nostrils to down, that line appears when there is tension on mouth for a positive or negative emotion.
There are some extra wrinkles, too, they appear by aging.

Here is laugh; mouth is open, eyes are almost or completely closed, there are wrinkles on the corners of eyes. There is that cheek line on both sides again like in the drawing above, like I said for negative or positive emotions they can appear.

A warning: Don’t draw those wrinkles too strong; it will make the drawing look unrealistic. Shading will do it; use few tones of shading for shadow.

Here are some sketches of random expressions:

You can see above sketches of surprise, fear, suspicion, excitement (or madness), anger, fright, smile… See the way eyebrows move and cause wrinkles. See that eyes are wide opened or close; and see if iris is seen all or more like covered by eyelids. See that cheekline at the sides of mouth. Nostrils can be flaring. Lips can be pressed together while suppressing cry for eg. Mouth can be wide opened for something exciting or terrifying etc.

There are numerous expressions, you can google them or look at yourself on mirror and create them on your drawing surface.Happy sketching! Until next week, so long!